


Heartbroken

by bomberqueen17



Category: Books of the Raksura - Martha Wells
Genre: F/M, Gap-Filler, The Siren Depths, relationship angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 11:12:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17140706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bomberqueen17/pseuds/bomberqueen17
Summary: A fairly self-indulgent and unnecessary gap-filler that I just had to write because there are so many emotions in The Siren Depths. Jade, before the incident with the predator, talking with Balm as she waits to follow Moon to Opal Night.





	Heartbroken

Jade paced in furious anger. It had been hours, and she’d tried everything to distract herself. Her bag was packed, she’d already picked her companions and was ready to go to Opal Night, but she had to wait. She had to wait. She had to wait until at least the next midmorning, she couldn’t even leave right away, because if she overtook Tempest and the others, they were likely to react badly. 

She wanted to go on her own, wanted to follow right behind them. But she couldn’t, she had to do it right.

Opal Night was a huge court. If she didn’t do it right, if their queen didn’t want to give Moon back to her, there’d be nothing she could really do. She had to do it right, she just did. And she had only the vaguest idea how, and no guidance whatsoever from Pearl. 

Balm came in with a pack and set it carefully next to Jade’s, by the door. She watched Jade pace for a moment, and then said, “We’ve completed our preparations. Everyone’s ready.”

“Good,” Jade said, and swung around to pace the other direction. Balm waited, and after a few moments, slipped further into the room to sit down next to the warming stones. 

“He’ll be all right,” Balm said quietly, after a little while. 

“You don’t know that,” Jade said.

“He’s not as delicate as other consorts,” Balm said. “He’s strong and he knows it.”

Jade gritted her teeth, and paused, staring at the wall. When she could do it without snarling, she turned around and looked at Balm. “If they treat him poorly,” she said, “and he decides that he’s done with Raksura entirely and goes back to living as a solitary, then how would we ever find him again?”

Balm grimaced. “We should have prearranged it with him, or something,” she said. “But surely he knows if he came back here, we wouldn’t throw him out?”

“I don’t know if he knows that,” Jade said. “And I think no matter what I told him, he’s got it in his head that we threw him out. He won’t come back here, Balm. Not on his own.”

Balm considered that, sucking worriedly on her lower lip. “I wish we’d had more warning, to talk it over with h--” She bit it off, remembering. Of course. Jade hadn’t given them any warning. 

Jade growled, and turned back away, stalking across the room again to regard the far wall. “I don’t think more time would have helped,” she said. “He wouldn’t have understood, and giving him more time to work himself up about it wouldn’t have helped us try to calm him back down.”

Balm visibly bit down on her counter-argument, which was probably wise of her but didn’t help Jade’s mood. Maybe she should have tried to talk to him about it, but how do you broach a topic like this? Moon would not have understood her any more clearly if she’d tried to bring it up in private. Every time she’d thought of it, she’d looked at him and very clearly played out the interaction in her head, and every time it had wound up with him running out of the room exactly as he had wound up doing.

And, of course, she’d been clinging to the forlorn belief that somehow it would work itself out. She really hadn’t expected Tempest to rope Sunset Water into it. 

And to be completely honest, she’d been trying to buy time for Stone to get back. 

But there was no sign of him, and she was going to have to grow up and deal with it herself. Having a line-grandfather was a luxury, and was to be honest probably the entire reason Indigo Cloud had lasted as long as they had. But just because he’d been around for generations didn’t mean she could count on him forever. 

“They wouldn’t drive him out, though,” Balm said. “Surely-- I mean, they won’t treat him like a solitary because presumably they know he’s not really one. So they’d be much nicer to him than, well.” She paused. “Than we were.”

All the tension shivered out of Jade in one long moment, and she let her shoulders slump, turning back around to face Balm. She walked slowly over, and sat down next to her on the furs by the bowl of warming stones. “Of course,” Jade said heavily, “that’s what I hope happens, Balm. Of course I hope they’re actually interested in him as a person and that he reunites with his family and all of that.”

“But you don’t think so,” Balm finished, watching her worriedly.

“I don’t,” Jade said. “But if that does happen-- Balm, think about it. He goes to this huge court, which has everything. And there are sympathetic people there. And maybe some brave young daughter queen who actually knows how to do it right actually courts him, competently.”

“Oh, Jade,” Balm said. “He wouldn’t!”

“Why wouldn’t he?” Jade asked. “I gave him up. He thinks I threw him out.”

“I mean, there won’t be time,” Balm said uneasily. 

“What if they turn me down,” Jade said, “or they string me along, and-- How long do you think it would take of being actually accepted into a court, and courted properly--”

“Jade,” Balm said, “stop. He won’t!”

“Why wouldn’t he?” Jade demanded savagely. “Why _wouldn’t_ he? What have I offered him but fight after fight, struggle after struggle-- this isn’t a safe court, even now, and I can’t even get a clutch from him. He accepted me because he’d never had any other offers and didn’t understand that he ever might. Now he’s got a court of his own, and given their reputation, he could probably get any queen he wanted. What does he really owe me? Why would he choose me?”

“But he’s--” Balm said, and it was painfully satisfying to see how hurt she was, thinking about it. “He’s-- he cares about us, we care about him, he wouldn’t just--”

“We just threw him out,” Jade said. “That’s what he thinks. It ripped him up to leave, he didn’t understand it and he thinks we threw him out. He thinks we never cared about him. He doesn’t understand, Balm. And of course I want them to be kind to him because I  _ do _ care about him, but if they are--”

She couldn’t say any more, and she didn’t have to. “Jade,” Balm said, soft and hoarse, and wrapped both her hands around Jade’s wrists, holding her gently but firmly. Jade flexed her claws but made no attempt to get free, and let Balm press their foreheads together as she breathed raggedly, trying to get herself under control.

It didn’t help. Being agitated about it didn’t help. She let herself breathe for a little while, and tried hard not to let herself think about Moon. 

It worked, for a little while. She got herself under control, regained enough composure to sit and make a pot of tea and have a reasoned discussion about the route to take to get there.

She made Balm go and sleep with Chime, who was distraught and needed the comfort, and managed to put on a brave enough face that Balm actually went. Maybe it wasn’t that brave a face, maybe Balm herself was just too distraught to fight any further.

Jade waited until she’d gone, and then wandered the court, trying to outpace her own thoughts. She went to Moon’s bower, and found where he’d left the bracelet she’d given him. That hurt. It was a rejection of her, but worse-- it was an expression of his sincere belief that she had rejected him. 

Dejectedly, she collected the bracelet. From a certain point of view, she  _ had _ been wrong to court him. Once they’d realized what he was, they should have tried to find his birthcourt, should have tried to at least ascertain his identity, should have kept him chaperoned and gently-treated while they had tracked down his origins and made sure there was no one to speak for him. At the time, though, their situation had been so impossible, so dangerous, and there really had been nothing they could do other than what they had, in their desperation.

But she shouldn’t have taken him. She shouldn’t have courted him and shouldn’t have taken him. Now it made her look mercenary, and calculating. Of course there had been a chance he’d belong to a court. But it had seemed to Jade that they must all be dead, and if they found out afterward that he had any living relatives they’d only be grateful Indigo Cloud had given him a place. 

And, of course, by the time it hadn’t been a crisis anymore, she’d been too fond of him to do other than she had. 

But if his birthqueen was alive, would she see it that way? 

She’d have to, Jade thought, and moved on from Moon’s terrible, empty bower. It smelled of him, but that didn’t help her. She kept wandering, and found herself standing in the doorway of Stone’s bower instead. The consort Tempest had brought had been up here, but she couldn’t smell him now; someone had told her he’d gone down to the teachers’ hall, and that was for the best. They’d take care of him. She didn’t want to see him.

Stone’s bower smelled a bit like Moon, strangely. Jade went in and tasted the air. 

She realized Moon must have slept here, during his last night in the colony, and it felt like she’d been punched in the stomach. Of course: he thought she’d rejected him, he didn’t want to see her, and her inability to master herself enough to tell the others what was going on meant that they’d all alienated Moon too from sheer obliviousness, so he wouldn’t have sought comfort with any of them.

So he’d come here, because Stone was the only one of them he still believed in. 

She couldn’t blame him one damn bit. Jade slung herself into Stone’s bed, Moon’s bracelet knocking cold around her wrist, and sobbed herself to sleep like a heartbroken fledgling.

**Author's Note:**

> The author has a p*treon where she writes this sort of thing far better than I do; I always make everyone too chatty and can't get the voices quite right. (I'm asterisking that because I know you're not allowed to link to them-- it's hers, not mine! but I still don't want any trouble!) But I wrote this and liked it, before she started the p*treon, so I'm posting it now. :)


End file.
